I've got a couple of things today. First, the photos I mentioned from our birthday camping trip.

 Wow! I'm SHOCKED that Blogger uploaded photos finally! Anyway, this was the weekend of Hubby's birthday.
  In other news (in case you missed it on Facebook), my darling daughter got the Difference Maker award at her school today. It's like Student of the Quarter. I've got a video here, though it's hard to understand what her teacher is saying so I'm including a transcription for you:

My Difference Maker for the quarter is a student of mine that has quietly been an absolute role model the entire year. My Difference Maker is somebody that will be a friend, somebody that’s always working, always quiet and peaceful and helpful  AND gets work done. My difference maker has grown so much academically and as a person and I am duly honored to say my Difference Maker is Miss McKinley. {applause} {then another teacher starts talking and we don't really care what she said...LOL}
 

 

So, there you have it. Until next time...

Hello again. Happy Memorial Day Weekend! We're having a pretty lazy weekend. Hubby went gold panning yesterday with his buddy. The original plan was for them to stay overnight and come home today but the other guy's wife got sick so he had to get home to be with her. So, they came back yesterday. When we asked the kids if they wanted to go camping/gold panning this weekend they declined. Guess they had to rest up from last weekend. Last weekend was hubby's birthday and he wanted to camp at the reservoir. The temperature was nice, not too hot, not too cold. But the WIND! It blew and howled and blew some more. That wasn't so pleasant. But the fishing was better. The last several times we've fished there we haven't caught anything. But Hubby caught a catfish and a couple of carp. MoMo had one on her line that got off. Big R also had one on the line that got away. Oh well, maybe next time. Overall, it was a pretty nice weekend. But this weekend we're just hanging out at home.
  I've been working on some projects, too. I don't even know how many projects I'm working on right now. A lot. But here's Eric's quilt. Eric's quilt I decided not to use the leftover triangles. Mainly because it would be quite a bit more work and he's already waited 5+ years for his quilt. Plus, I want to have more time to work on my other projects! LOL But I did use some leftover strips and pieced a border with those. I can't decide if I want to add another black border to the outside or not. What do you think?
  Here's a project I finished a couple weeks ago but waited to post since it was for a birthday present. But now she has it so I can share! Hunger Games iPad case I paper pieced the Hunger Games symbol then used that block to make a zippered and padded case. I also threw in some personalized notepads and stamp. So, happy birthday! I'm glad you like it!
  I also started sewing triangles together for the triangle baby quilt. I have 2 rows done. triangle quilt 2 rows But then I got a bee in my bonnet and decided I HAD to start another project and that it HAD to be done first. So, I've spent the last couple days cutting these. 168 circles, 168 squares Yep, that's right, 168 circles and 168 squares. The squares I cut with my rotary cutter so they weren't so bad but the circles are all cut by hand. Needless to say, my hand kind of hurts. I'm ready, though, to start sewing them together now. So, in a little bit (after I finish this post) I plan to do exactly that. And no one better get in my way!
  I did also want to share some more pictures of the garden. Because I know you are all as excited as I am about it! It's getting big. And sort of being taken over by tomatillos. We did not plant any tomatillos this year. But we got a TON of plants this year that came up all on their own! I obviously have lots of jars of canned tomatillo salsa in my future. :) Also, there are lots of johnny jump ups that come up on their own every year. I planted some in a pot several years ago and they have spread and spread. Even into my vegetable garden bed but I don't mind. I love seeing their cheery faces in the midst of everything else! So, here are the garden pictures...
Main garden bed
Tomatillos
Main bed with johnny jump ups
Potato planter
Spinach, tomatillos, sunflower, etc
Tiny lemon!
Ripening strawberries
Blueberries
Front yard bed
Blackberries
Volunteer pea
Giant pumpkin
And here are our girls. Well, hopefully they are all girls. We haven't discovered that any are roosters. Yet. Right now we usually get 2 chicken eggs and 1 duck egg a day. But our Valentine's Day chicks are almost old enough to start laying. Then we might get as many as 8 chicken eggs a day!
Our girls
Our girls 2
  Alright, I think that's it for now. I think we have a few pictures from last weekend but they're on the other computer so when I copy them I'll try to post them here. Hope you have a great weekend!

Hello. So, today was Big R's follow up appointment for his finger.  It truly is fractured and he ended up needing an actual cast on it. For at least 6 weeks. Yay. Well, he's actually pretty excited about it right now. He thinks it's pretty cool and "science-y." Because the cast material goes on flexible then gets hard. We'll see how he feels when it gets hotter and it gets hot and sweaty under there and he can't swim and all that. Blogger is (still) having problems with uploading photos so I'm uploading photos to Flickr again. You can just click on the orange text which is linked to the photos. He did get a manly colored cast. Blue. And a bit of red tape. So he's kind of patriotic. Big R with cast

And our gardening is going pretty well this year. We've got spinach ready to harvest now. Spinach And lettuce growing fast. Lettuce The strawberries are blossoming (blossoms) and we've even got strawberries growing. Berries I can hardly wait until they're ripe! We planted Italian (flat leaf) parsley last year and it has reseeded and spread like crazy. strawberries vs parsley In the front yard we cleared a space and planted zucchini, yellow squash, and pumpkins. MoMo had brought home a cabbage plant from school and she planted that up there, too. front yard bed We built a rough planter out of pallets and filled it with compost we had made and planted 10 pounds of seed potatoes in there, both Yukon Gold and Red Pontiac. The plants have come up and seem to be thriving so hopefully we'll be able to harvest plenty of potatoes in a few months. Potatoes We have some tomato plants but we haven't put them in the ground yet since the weather is still unpredictable. It's been mostly warm but a couple of nights ago we had freezing temps overnight. So we've been moving the tomatoes (and dwarf lemon tree and dwarf fig) inside on nights where it is likely to freeze. We've still got more we want to plant--some peppers and cauliflower and things. Maybe we'll get that done this weekend.

I've also been cutting some fabric. I signed up for another I Spy fabric swap. I had 6 fabrics from previous swaps that had enough to use for this swap. I Spy squares Which meant I had to get 4 more fabrics. I cut 20 squares from 10 different fabrics for a total of 200 squares. Then I get 200 different squares back. So, I cut the squares from the 6 fabrics I had and I'm waiting on the other fabrics to come in the mail. I Spy fabric on order I also have a big pile of triangles cut out for the triangle baby quilt, just waiting to be sewn together. Triangles I've got a couple of other projects planned, as well. May totally snuck up on me. I saw something a couple of days ago that said Mother's Day was 12 days away or something. That took me completely by surprise. In my mind it was further away. And right along with Mother's Day I've got no fewer than 3 birthdays this month. So, yeah, it'll be a busy month.

Well, I think that's all for now. Have a wonderful weekend!

Well, we just got back from the doctor's office. Big R has a new accessory. Unfortunately Blogger isn't cooperating with photo uploads--again. Irritating. Ok, then, here's a link to the photo on Flickr.
 Link to photo
Yup, that's a splint on his right pinkie finger. A couple of days ago there was a mysterious collision between said finger and MoMo's knee. Not sure how that happened exactly. Kind of an odd body part collision, if you ask me. But in any case, obviously it hurt pretty badly and it swelled some but he could move it and all so I didn't think it was broken and we just iced it. I figured it would improve in a day or two but it stayed swollen so I took him to get it checked out. They took x rays and the doctor thought she saw a fracture. She wants a radiologist to take a look for a confirmation but in the meantime Big R's sporting a splint. Unfortunately the doctor had to make do with purple bandage. She apologized profusely for not having a more "manly" color available at the time. (I went to the store promptly and purchased blue tape so when we change the tape he won't have to suffer with purple anymore) So, he's going to be in a splint for at least a week. Six weeks (or more) if it is indeed fractured. We're waiting on a phone call to get the radiologist's verdict and we have a follow up appointment next week. In the meantime, guess he's going to have to learn to write left handed!

Hey there, just wanted to pop in with a preview of my latest quilt top.

I actually started this one over a year ago. I began in January with a lot of ambition and purpose and got 4 columns done pretty quickly. Then I put it aside for whatever reason (that I can't recall now) and it got relegated to the works-in-progress black hole. But I managed to rescue it yesterday and it didn't take long to finish the last column and trim up the sides. It needs a bit more trimming to even out the tops and bottoms and they need to be stitched all together. Then I think I will add borders all around. This quilt is a long overdue one. It's going to a friend who I promised a quilt over 5 years ago! I did tell him at the time that I had a number of quilts to make before I could make him his but I totally intended to get his done a lot sooner. Story of my life, it seems. Anyway, trimming the sides gave me a pile of what I think look almost like little pennants and I can't quite bring myself to toss them.

Aren't they cute? Perhaps I could use them in one of the borders of the quilt. I don't know but I think these have a destiny beyond the trash can.

So, does anyone see something different about this girl?

Yep, she got her ears pierced. She's actually had them a couple of weeks now and she's super happy. She had wanted to have it done for quite some time. She was really brave when it was done. She didn't even flinch! One ear then the other and it was done. Then we all had Cinnabons to celebrate. :)

  Also, I got some awesomeness in the mail today. Well, actually UPS brought it...

FABRIC!!! (insert happy dance here) We've kind of got this huge project we've been working on here. The garage. Yikes. It was so disorganized. So much stuff! And with the new freezer that we had to fit in there we REALLY needed to do something about it. So, it's been a work in progress for a few weeks and I had gone through my fabric and convinced myself not to buy any new fabric until I had my old stuff under control. Meaning using up some of it and getting it organized. And I was doing really well with that. I even went to a local quilt shop and just looked at all the wonderful fabric. Didn't buy a single yard. Or half yard. Or fat quarter. But then I learned that a friend of ours was having a baby boy and, of course, I NEED to make said baby a quilt. And I didn't have any appropriate fabric on hand so naturally I was required to buy some. Ok, so, only the six of the fabrics are actually for the baby quilt. The rest I just liked. Plus, if you spend $35 you get free shipping. So since I was just under $35, by adding just a little bit more, I saved. Right? Um, yeah, so, these fabrics here are the six I picked for the baby quilt:

I ordered online and sort of crossed my fingers that they would really go together once I got them and put them side by side. Sometimes it can be hard to tell in the online pictures for sure if the colors are close enough. But they all coordinate really well even though they are almost all from completely different lines of fabric. Awesome! I had seen this quilt on Pinterest a while back and added it to my list of Quilts I Want to Make Before I Die. It's about 500 miles long, this list. Even if I made a quilt a month (or a week) from the list I still probably wouldn't make a dent in that list. It's REALLY LONG. And Pinterest isn't helping. But I digress...
Here it is, as seen on Pinterest, the Triangle Quilt:

I didn't realize until right now that I picked a very similar same color scheme to the inspiration quilt in the fabrics I got. That wasn't intentional. I picked the animal prints first (those are both from the same fabric line), then pulled the orange, green, and blue from those and selected the other fabrics in those colors. But they're pretty fun, right? Anyway, I also found some other fabrics that I couldn't resist added to reach the free shipping threshold.

This last one is my absolute favorite!

I just LOVE it! It's one of those ones where I'm not sure I can ever actually use it for anything. I might just hoard it so I can bring it out once in a while and gaze at it. I mean, wait, I'd never do anything like that. Hoarding fabric is not good. Saw this on Pinterest as well and thought it rather frighteningly close to truth.

 I console myself that I really do use my fabric! So is that really the same as hoarding?  I tell myself it's not. Don't judge me...

Well, it took me more than a few days but I finally finished the quilt top I mentioned in my last post! :) It's made with the Sultry line of fabric from Moda. I made a baby quilt out of the same fabric a couple of years ago. I was sort of hording the rest of the fabric because I love it so much. But we recently started trying to clean out/organize the garage and I was going through my fabric and decided I needed to use up a good portion of my fabric. (So I can buy new fabric, of course! LOL) And I decided I'd make myself a quilt out of the Sultry fabric. I saw the inspiration quilt on Pinterest so I can say that I really did make something on Pinterest! Unfortunately, Blogger isn't cooperating with me and I can't upload the photos I took. So here's a link to the pics on Flickr. click here Well, hope you have a terrific day! I've got to go do some laundry and stuff but hopefully later I'll find some time to sew some more...